


In the Telling

by significantowl



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Canon Disabled Character, Fairy Tale Elements, M/M, Powerful Charles, Telepathy, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-25 17:10:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3818320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/significantowl/pseuds/significantowl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All tales grow in the telling, and tales of the woods more so than most.</p><p>The stories vary on all points but two: Everyone returns alive. Everyone returns changed.</p><p>Erik sets out in search of the truth, and finds Charles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Telling

The tale grew in the telling, as all such do, and swelled with each sour sip of ale that passed from the men’s flagons to their lips. 

Erik listened.

He set out at first light to seek the truth of the matter, not because of the bounty the men promised, spilling coins from their leather purses onto the scarred table while their eyes danced with dark mirth, sure and certain that he would never claim it; not because he had use of their gold, though he did, nor because of the savage joy it would bring to prove such creatures wrong. Not even because he sensed dissimulation and deceit waiting where the road led, and despised the thought right down to the marrow of his bones.

Erik set out with a blade in his boots and a blade at his hip for reasons truer than all of these: he set out to find kin.

+

The hard-packed earth of the track led over hills of swaying grass and through bright meadows of cornflower and thistle. By midday, the village was a forgotten speck in a valley at his back and jagged mountain peaks filled the horizon. Erik pressed on, further and further still, his crimson cloak warm over his shoulders as the sun dwindled and the forest closed in. Trees darker and thicker than any he had ever seen on this island loomed tall above the path. Moss-dripped, dark-shadowed, wider than the reach of any man's arms, they veiled the sky. 

Perhaps this alone was enough to frighten the men of the isle, accustomed to their fields, their golden wheat, their pastureland. To Erik it was but a pale reflection of the forests of his childhood, deep tracts stretching east into a cold land; it would take far more than this to send a shiver into his beating heart.

He did not say so. Why speak to ears unseen? Pitcher plants rose from wet troughs on either side of the track. He imagined the men of the village begging them for mercy as sunlight became a memory, and verdant shadows turned even their own skin a greenish hue, getting only what they deserved for talking to the forest: their words swallowed, trapped, drowned. 

Erik blinked a fleck of dirt from his eye. Blinked again, and found sand.

He had been to the south-lands and seen the deserts that burned for days. He saw them again now, precisely as they lived in his memory - no, more accurately even than that; precisely as he had experienced them. The sun, white-hot, dazzling his eyes, searing the tender back of his neck. The dark storm brewing in the distance, made of sand and whipping wind, ready to swallow him whole.

A sound escaped him: a snort of derision for a hand so clearly shown. No tree spirit, no forest demon, had pulled that moment from his mind. The forest changed for every man, the villagers said; faced with something like this, were they truly too limited to realize it was no forest at all?

He had answered his own question in the asking. 

The storm raced closer, a dark tide over the golden sands. _I have not strayed from the path. I will not,_ Erik thought, with a determination sharp as joy. _What will you do -_

The grit in his eyes became too much. They closed. Opened.

The forest was burning.

Smoke caught in Erik's throat, heavy with something more than ash, something ferric and alchemical. Fire swept up trunks and along branches, turning green needles to fiery cinders. When a shower of sparks fell, he put up his arm, automatic. Fallen logs, once damp with moss and fungi, became tinderboxes; an explosion to his left bathed Erik's skin in heat and illuminated a small cottage, its roof crowned by the roots of a flaming tree.

The fire might be staged for his benefit, but it was not _his_ ; these fumes choked like hate, but were nothing like the black, calculated trails that rose from the pyres in his memory. Something had gone awry. But anyone could take a turn, get lost in their own mind, scar and burn; Erik knew that better than most. Sighing against set teeth, he let the track behind, dodged a crackling limb, and ducked through the cottage’s open doorway.

Stillness. Quiet. Dust motes floating in pale light. Books on towering shelves; a comfortable sofa, a cozy table. The smell of dry tea-leaves and fresh-baked bread. No one to rescue. No one to fight.

Erik turned in a slow circle. _If you wished me to leave your lands, you would have offered up mundanity such as this from the very start. But you tempted me with fear; you taunted me with truth. Finish your work. Show yourself._

Something in Erik's vision flickered, and at the table there suddenly sat a man in a wooden chair with carved wheels. His hair was the brown of chestnuts, his eyes as dazzling and uncanny as anything Erik had yet seen on this journey, and his mouth cried out for Erik’s attention, even before he spoke: “As you are my guest, I should not dream of arguing with you. Please. Have a seat.”

Erik chose to accede, but only because doing so improved his view. "The stories vary on all points but two. Everyone returns alive. Everyone returns changed."

"And that was enough for you," the man murmured. "You were certain you knew what lay ahead. You expected - me."

Yes. No. A man, certainly, and one with power, but one so immediately arresting? Erik was aware that all he saw now might be yet another illusion, and one designed specifically to please his eyes, but he was disinclined to believe it so. Tight lines at the corners of those striking eyes spoke of a weariness that looked like truth. And, possibly, of the toll that last spectacle had taken - he had been hated, Erik was sure of it. And burned.

Erik said, "I've never seen a spirit, or a demon, or a sprite, but I know something of the powers that may lie within flesh and blood." He let the knife slip from his belt, spin in a slow circle over the table, and sink into a crusty sourdough loaf. "And I'm not afraid to break bread with you."

A bubble of mirth escaped those lips. "How rude would I be, to refuse an offer of food at my own table? By all means. Break away."

Erik cut two slices and spread them with creamy butter the man kept at the ready in a lidded crock. He did so not as a show of his bravery, but of his conviction that in this act there was nothing to fear.

“Charles.” Accepting a slice of bread, his host smiled. “ _The man_ is growing tiresome, wouldn't you say?”

It was a good name, one of power and strength. Offered freely, as no otherworldly creature's would have been.

"But the stories were wrong,” Charles said, sinking the words like careful, quiet stones. “Not everyone returns.” It was obviously meant to prickle the skin, but for Erik it did nothing of the sort. When Charles tipped his head, indicating the window beyond his shoulder, Erik spotted a shock of blue fur moving in what was now simply a twilight forest. "Perhaps my visitors do indeed change, but it's because they seek change that they come. So I am providing a service, am I not?”

“Why do I suspect that's a side effect dressed up in a cloak of intention?

That bubble of laughter again. “But in no way as dashing as your own, I'm quite sure.... But all right. There were times, due to various tinctures and treatments, that my influence was less --"

Charles paused, as if looking for help; Erik waited for him to find his own word.

"--lucid. Since then, I’ve realized that it performs a social function. If young men and women wish to test their mettle against me, if it provides them a lesson in humility, if it helps them to see their fears held up in front of their eyes --"

"--to conceal what you are, and pass your time helping ordinary men with their petty lives, when you could be offering your hand to your brothers and sisters instead."

Silence. Erik marked the passing of moments by his own breaths. Outside, where the thick forest growth turned all to gloom, the evening seemed to have drawn no further in; the men of the village - had they ever made it this far - would've taken it to mean time had stopped, and they were trapped in this fairy's lands forever.

"It's a fine idea,” Charles said finally, slowly. “But my friend who stayed - my sister who left - I'm afraid I haven't done well by either.”

The desire to be different this time, to be better, nearly crushed Erik with a hopeless weight. He knew it was Charles’, and a load the other man must have carried even as he'd drawn Erik to this place; but it wouldn’t have been half so heavy if not echoed by Erik’s own need to do right by a brother, one that had increased tenfold the moment he'd laid eyes on Charles.

"Do you live in the belly of this forest because you _want_ to separate yourself from the world, or because you believe you must?"

There was silence once more. This time Erik didn't look to the world outside; the world inside his head shifted, as if a small seed had begun to swell and grow, pressing earth aside to make room for its burgeoning presence.

_Have you not been looking for fear? Have you not found it?_

No. Anger had held sway, and conviction, that someone with so much power should not be wasting it on the unworthy. And now, even as Charles breathed inside his mind and nothing was his own, kinship ruled over all. 

_No. I sought change._

+

All tales grow in the telling, but there was no one Erik wished to tell, so his stayed clear and true. Do not beware the path; leave it or not, as you wish. Do not fear his food should you hunger, or his drink should you thirst. But his eyes are a snare, and his lips --

Kiss them once, and kiss them forevermore.


End file.
